1. Field of the Invention
This invention is in the field of communication center technology, and pertains more particularly to enabling customers of communication centers to evaluate agents of the center and to exercise some measure of control over contact with agents.
2. Description of Related Art
Communication centers and related technology are very well-known in the art, and most people have had experience with contacting a communication center for any of a variety of services. For example, vendors of electronic appliances, banking services, insurance companies, and a nearly inexhaustible supply of businesses have reason to deal with large numbers of clients seeking service, through communication centers.
These communication centers were until relatively recently before the filing of the present application termed call centers, because the technology applied in the main to telephone calls; originally conventional connection-oriented switched technology (COST) calls, and more recently data-network telephone (DNT) calls. More recently such centers have expanded to provide communication through text messaging, emails, chat rooms, and any and every means of communication.
It is true, as stated above, that most people, as of the time of filing the present application, have had some experience with one or more communication centers, and, unfortunately, the experiences are not always rewarding. It is common for callers to be routed to queues, such as in an automatic call distribution (ACD) system. These delays can be frustrating, and technology has advanced to offer call back services and the like, wherein a caller may elect to be called at a certain time and place of the callers choosing.
After being connected to an agent, a caller may sometimes discover, even after the delay, that the agent is the wrong agent, and the call must be re-routed. And even when the connection is to an agent that might help, not all agents are equal and always even-tempered and helpful, and not all callers are compatible with all agents. Customers may quite often come away from such an experience dissatisfied or angry.
Since happy customers are a desirable outcome of nearly all contacts, it has occurred to the present inventor that it would be in the interest of an enterprise that uses call centers to have access to the opinions of customer/callers relative to the performance of agents of the center, and it might also be desirable and beneficial to even allow some control by callers of to which agents their calls might be directed.